CHAPTER XLV.
BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT.
Nothing could exceed the rage of Andrew Goldsmith when he heard that his grandson was about to be taken to Yorkshire, instead of being brought to Apley. What measures he had expected Sidney Martin to take in order publicly to acknowledge Sophy's son he hardly knew. But to send him to so distant a spot, without any open recognition of his rights, was a step that filled the old man with suspicion. Sidney came back to Apley, but Andrew refused to see him, feeling that it was impossible to forgive his enemy, and equally impossible to control his impotent wrath. Sidney passed up and down the village street daily, but Andrew sat no longer in his shop, for fear of catching a passing sight of the prosperous traitor, whom he could not punish. He would not even see Margaret or Dorothy. He held himself altogether aloof even from his sister Rachel, who was so completely on his enemies' side.
In a few days after Sidney's return Mary told him that his grandson had reached Brackenburn, and that Philip was staying with him. His indignation and suspicion made him restless to see Sophy's son with his own eyes, and to confer with him as to the claiming of his rights. An attorney in the neighborhood, whose opinion he asked, advised him to go down into Yorkshire without letting the family know of his purpose. He told Mary that he was going away on business for a few days, and she and Rachel rejoiced that he could give his mind to business at such a time. They, too, were anxious and overcurious to see their great-nephew, but it did not occur to either of them that their brother should undertake any secret enterprise. By and by, when Martin was getting a little used to the change in his surroundings, Margaret intended to go to Brackenburn herself, taking Dorothy and Rachel with her. But for the present all agreed that it was best to leave Martin to free and unrestrained wanderings about the moors.
Andrew traveled northward with excited and extravagant visions of his grandson. He could think of Mr. Martin's eldest son and heir only as being like Philip and Hugh—young men whom he had always regarded with mingled deference, admiration, and affection. He had been proud of "the two young gentlemen from the Hall." This elder brother of theirs no doubt resembled them, though he was his grandson.
His heart was full of tenderness toward his lost Sophy's child, as passionate as the bitter resentment he felt against Sidney. It would be impossible to say which was the stronger. His whole nature was in a tumult. The keen and profound anger he felt against Sidney when his mind brooded over his treacherous friendship to himself, alternated with a still keener exultation as the thought flashed across him that he was Sidney's father-in-law, and the grandfather of his heir. He, the old saddler of Apley, insignificant and poor, was still the grandfather of the future squire. He wished that Sophy's son had been the heir to Apley, which was a finer place than Brackenburn. What a glory and a joy it would have been to pace down the village street and up the broad avenue to his grandson's Hall! Though this glory could never be his, his spirit was greatly exalted within him at the thought of his grandson being the owner of Brackenburn in the future.
He walked the few miles between the station and Brackenburn, for he was a vigorous old man, and not accustomed to hiring conveyances. But he was tired by the time he reached the point in the road from which the black and white, half timber house was first visible. It disappointed him more now than it had done before, when he visited it on Philip's coming of age. This old, irregular pile of buildings, with its many gables and the old golden-gray stone wall shutting it in, which so delighted Dorothy and Philip, contrasted unfavorably in Andrew's eyes with the massive frontage and mullioned windows of Apley Hall. It seemed more than ever a studied and suspicious injustice to hide his grandson out of the way in this solitary farmhouse.
From the point where he stood the great moors, putting on their robes of purple heather and golden gorse, could be seen stretching behind the house up to the horizon. It was early in July, and the midsummer sun lighted up the undulating ground, displaying every patch of bracken and of gorse, with the rough, jagged teeth of rock thrusting themselves upward everywhere in their midst. To Andrew's eyes, accustomed to southern cultivation, the moors seemed a dreary and wild desert, fit only for tramps and gypsies to squat in. He could see no path across them; the road on which he stood ran down to the house in the dingle, but stopped there. All the deserted region beyond was bare and trackless moorland. It seemed to check his exalted visions of his grandson's glory. This place was the inheritance of Sophy's son.
But he would see him righted, if Sidney meant to wrong him. This deserted child should not be cheated of his birthright. He strode down the long road in the hot afternoon sunshine, weary and sore at heart. But he was about to see his grandson, and to tell him, if no one had yet told him, of the prosperous future that lay before him, of the riches that had been accumulating for him, of the place he would take in England. All his suspicions and bitterness did not prevent his troubled heart from beating with high hopes, or his aged frame from trembling with eagerness to embrace his daughter's son.
He approached the house with some caution, for in spite of his love for Philip he could not shake off the misgiving that he would be willing to supplant his unwelcome elder brother. The high, gray wall which surrounded the house hid him from sight until he reached the double gates hung upon massive stone pillars. Beyond them lay the forecourt, paved with broad slabs of stone, and opposite to the gates stood the wide, hospitable wooden porch, which protected the heavy house door, studded with nails. Andrew paused for a minute or two, gazing through the iron gates. On the steps of the porch lay a man basking in the sunshine like a dog. He had kicked off his boots, which lay at a little distance from him, and his bare feet were stretched out on the heated pavement. They were bruised and scarred, as if they had never been protected against winter frosts, or the piercing of sharp rocks. This man's hands were even worse than his feet: misshapen, clumsy, frost-bitten, covered with warts and corns, one finger altogether gone, and his nails worn down into the hard skin. His face wore the same disfiguring marks of constant exposure to extreme changes of heat and frost. His front teeth were gone, and his skin furrowed with coarse wrinkles. His hair was cut short, but it was scanty, tangled, and matted. Many an English tramp would have looked a gentleman beside him. Andrew gazed at this strange figure with curiosity. Probably this man, if he belonged to the place, as he seemed to do, for he was comfortably smoking a pipe, was one of his grandson's foreign servants. Yet he looked too uncivilized, too savage to be even a servant. He ought not to be lying there in front of the house—the stables were too good for him. Down south, nearer London, no gentleman would put up with such a scarecrow about his place. But his clothes were good, though he had divested himself of most of them, and laid them under his head as a pillow. Martin must learn that such a rough fellow must not lie on his front doorstep.
Passing through the gates, Andrew approached this wild figure with somewhat slow and hesitating steps. No one else was in sight to whom he could speak, and all the sunny house seemed asleep, except this strange, uncouth man. But there was something in the sad, marred face which appealed to his very heart; a dumb, pathetic appealing gaze, such as looks out of the eyes of a dog, and that seems yearning to express in words the feelings that lie forever imprisoned in his almost human nature. The eyes of the stranger, gleaming from under his shaggy eyebrows, looked into his own with a gaze that was familiar to him. It shook Andrew to his inmost soul.